Malicious online advertisements continue to present problems, including problems for advertising networks, such as Web portals including search engines and search engine providers, as well as for users who receive the advertisements. In a process often known as editorial, advertising networks, or other responsible or involved entities, often perform checks to try to ensure that advertisements are safe. These checks may include automated or human checks, or a combination thereof. The checks are often preformed prior to the advertisements going “live”, or being available for serving to users. Designers of malicious advertisements, however, are motivated and skilled at creating malicious advertisements that are difficult to detect.
Additionally, factors such as sophisticated, constantly evolving, and rapidly changing technologies provide ongoing new opportunities for creative designers of malicious advertisements. This can make it very difficult to keep ahead of and detect malicious advertisements. As just one of many examples, malicious advertisements have cropped up that behave normally for a period of time, but are set to, or can be triggered to, change their behavior at a later time. Such advertisements may pass editorial in their initial form, but may essentially morph into something different and dangerous, or may change their behavior and behave maliciously, at a later time, which may be during active serving. Some such advertisements may even change back and forth from a non-malicious state to a malicious state multiple times, further confounding detection efforts.
There is a need for methods and systems for managing malicious advertisements, including threats or risks posed by malicious advertisements and potentially malicious or risky advertisements.